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MINISTRY OF CULTURELesson # 16 : PETS

Welcome class to another Jesus Christ, have I really been doing this routine for over a year? My god! Does anyone read this nonsense? Is this lone cry in the wilderness momentous, glib, sagacity, or just byte upon byte of inconsequential folly? Have I really got nothing better to do? Oh, yeah, pets….
WHY DO WE KEEP PETS?Man sits atop the food chain like a mighty slaughtering deity; craving nothing - controlling all. Opulence and achievement testify to the dexterity of our kind, so what gives with the Guinea Pigs? What in Tom Hell are they all about?
Well, my vexed neophytes, it is a worthy question, and perhaps one that is best answered by a hastily thrown together series of flippant examples. I know, I know, this column is so fluid. Don't ask me, it's a gift.

YOU ARE INADEQUATEFace it, pets are a display of feeble-minded weakness. Someone with a wide circle of absorbing friends, a flaming libido and a mastery of their own destiny does not need a pet. In short, if you have one, you are a hapless failure, doomed to grow sentimentally attached to an animal that, if ever it got the chance, would run so far away from your obsequious, grinning drool-mouth, so quickly, your inconsequential, fat head wouldn't know whether to spit or polish its bicycle. But it doesn't stop there.

WHAT KIND OF PET YOU HAVE DETERMINES WHAT SORT OF IDIOT YOU ARECATS

You love to shovel affection into a black hole where it is compressed and returns to you in the form of scratch-marks and vinegar-piss.

You project impenetrable nonchalance onto a canvas of hatred and distrust.

You are a masochist. Get some help

DOGS

You enjoy owning a creature that for regular food is prepared to sit and endure your endless blathering, and will, if beaten, follow basic instruction.

You will tell anyone who will listen details of every amusing thing you dog has done, and if your dog has done nothing humorous (few have) you will lie.

You secretly want to be a dog.

FISH

A simpleton's pet. Wars are being fought, mountains are being climbed, revolutions are revolving and you watch a fish swim in a circle.

You know the extent of your inadequacy as a human, so you add devices to the tank such as "bubble machines" and comic shipwrecks to detract from the mind-freezing asininity of your dark hobby.

Your friends, even the ones with pets themselves, think you and your fish are disturbing.

Children fear you.

MICE

You are weird.

And stupid.

Mice are filthy vermin, only fit for scurrying around, scavenging a place on the evolutionary ladder by virtue of their own sneaky, scrounging nature and the fun scientists can have with them in laboratories. Mice have a hard existence and dearly want to be extinct. Idiots like you are their enemy.

GUINEA PIGS

Guinea pigs are fat vicious pencil-cases-waiting-to-happen. Children like them because they are curious about how they got their names. Buy your child an encyclopaedia rather than a guinea pig. It is less of a burden for all concerned.

HAMSTERS

You are a sexual deviant

ANY SORT OF BIRD EXCEPT CHICKENS

You are a lonely old person with few people who care about you, and even less who will voluntarily talk to you so you take out your frustration with the world by keeping an animal that would otherwise migrate annually over 2000 miles in a cage too small for half a child.

You do this on the flimsy premise that you keep each other company.

If parrots could actually talk rather than imitate sounds, they would say "Let me go. I hate you."

CHICKENS

Apart from the nifty decapatatory-sprinting schtick, chickens are only good for eggs. But you can buy eggs anywhere, so really, you're just trying to impress us. It isn't working. We don't stink of chicken shit. You do.

DISPOSAL OF EX-PETS1. Bury it (requires land, shovel)
2. Eat it (requires an oven, cutlery, basil)
3. Throw it in a river (requires a river)
4. Red Star it to BBC TV's animal hospital with a note "Am I too late?"
5. Take it back to the shop, claim a refund
6. Hand it in to lost property
7. Sell it to the weird guy at work
8. Feed it to your new pet

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?

Your pet hates you

Mice are scared of cats, but frighten elephants who in turn frighten dogs, who in turn frighten cats, who in turn frighten mice.